Shadow
by sciguy007
Summary: The burning of Lostlorn relocates a zoroark to a new world, where he must deal with his past, the past of his new trainer, and learn to move on. [original region][swearing][non-descript references to pokémon mating for the sake of story]


**A/N: Hey there, I guess. I suppose I'll explain the purpose of this story first.**

**I am very dissatisfied with the quality of fanfiction on this site, particularly with the more popular pokémon. That isn't to say there are no good fanfics, (*cough* Pedestal *cough*) but there are no really serious fanfics, especially in pokémon, that I think are really good at tackling some issues I think should be tackled, that pokémon lends itself well to tackling. Also, none of the ones that do a good job of that have zoroark as a character. So I have some personal reasons for that, too. (I just think he's cool.)**

**How I'm doing this is by posting this, my accepted draft of the first chapter, then working on the story until I think I'm finished. Once I am finished, I will post the rest chapter by chapter, with one chapter per week so I can make sure everything is in working order, one at a time. The reason I do this is because I usually end up writing the first chapter like its own little short story. The second and third chapters may also be like this. Do not be alarmed. They are highly expositional, but I try to do a good job being entertaining as well. I just really prefer good characters over anything else.**

**tl;dr: stories i've seen have been bad for a while, i'm "fixing" that with this, which will be finished after some time.**

**As a side note, I don't really recommend following this story, unless there is a second chapter up as of your reading this, or you are willing to deal with this chapter changing a bunch without new chapters actually getting posted.**

* * *

"Fighting was everything. It was what I was expected to do." Lithium laid her head on the ground next to me, sending blades of wind-whipped grass into chaos.

"Forced to fight, then abandoned if you're too weak."

"Please don't say that," she said, exhaling deeply in rhythm with the wind. "You don't know."

"I know enough."

"There is enough to know that it is impossible to know enough." I could only look at her. Pacifists weren't supposed to love the one who made them fight. But she still managed to be right. Always.

"I'm sorry."

"I know." She moved to rest her head on my chest. Motionless but for her twiddling her tag, there we lay, until waves of grass reminded us of motion, and the world breathed again.

It only took another moment for the sun to rekindle my thoughts. "I'm not sorry for him."

"I know."

Chapter 1  
Fire

Cold. Not enough to hinder movement, or create an effect of super sensitive nerves, but enough to be a bother. To remind me I am not designed for it. That I do not belong. These thoughts do not haunt me, though. I have other thoughts for that.

I look down at my tag, dangled around my neck.

_LITHIUM_

The wind drifts over me from behind while I try not to move. I think maybe my prey will smell me, but the rain scatters my concern. Not that it matters. The advantage given by the rain is nullified by the disadvantage of getting me wet. As if removing my scent is any sort of advantage. A pidgey's sense of smell lacks the strength to find me on a clear day. All they can smell is berries, their strong eyesight making up for the weakness, and leaving the pidgey more able to find food than to avoid becoming it. Yet overabundance still persists. It has for three years, stripping the forest of every precious resource reliant on being left alone. I find myself happy once more that berries are not my only source of food. My prey does not, falling limp in my jaws, extraordinary eyesight no use against my hunger. A clean kill, no tricks. I smile and begin the return trip to my tree. No use eating in the rain.

Leaves protected me from the rain, keeping my mane from becoming heavier than me, or dragging on the ground, making it dirty. But this forest didn't have leaves. Even though the strange needles stayed through the cold season, they offered no service to other life. Nothing ate them, and the very common rain slipped by with little argument. Their stubborn persistence made it more difficult to tell when the cold season was coming, especially when it was already colder than Lostlorn a majority of the time.

Memories flooded my mind as I began the ascent to my branch. I waited for one to stick. My father teaching me to hunt, using patrats as targets. So much learning on my part killed many patrats. It made sense. Their high nutrient density and numerous and widespread existence made them the easiest and best food source. They dug burrows everywhere in Lostlorn, but here their numbers had fallen below that of even the various types of predator pokémon. I had not seen one since moving. I blamed myself.

The rain finally stopped its assault on my head as I climbed into my nook. Lostlorn stayed warm and dry all year outside of the cold season, which doubled as the wet season. It still never rained as hard or as much as it did here. Several weeks had to be reserved to dig a burrow large enough, but the tree had long been dead before I found it. My actions did no damage, and I managed to stay dry, so I felt no remorse in having somewhere to live. Trees couldn't complain, anyway.

I shuddered as water dripped off my mane, slowly pooling in the middle of the dugout, too much pouring out of my fur for the tree to absorb it. The size of the dig couple with the runoff removes all possibility of sitting on a dry surface. I sigh and resign myself to standing, ringing all moisture in my mane out the hole and into the rainy afternoon. All this rain would make me sick one day. I was surprised it hadn't already.

It struck me that the pidgey may get sick from the rain as well. Did it rain so much in Kanto? I took the first bite, which would inevitably define the rest of the season. A little dull. Sort of tough. They were running out of food. So was I. Feathers began to line the the floor, slowly building into small piles around me. Another reason to prefer patrats. Fur did not separate from the body so easily. But it didn't matter what I thought. The only food were pidgeys. Pidgeys have feathers. At least they tasted good. When the entire species wasn't starving. Which it was.

Not enough. Never enough. Not anymore. Not since the fire. I growled audibly without really meaning to, the sound mixing with the pounding rain to make a dissonant chord. My ears flicked at the noise, displeased. I didn't blame them. Everything lost or ruined in a day. In the distance, I knew Lostlorn still sat where it always did, too far to travel, too burnt to inhabit. Picking a direction, I hope I've pointed my eyes the right way.

The haze in the distance reminded me of smoke.

I turned myself to face the inside of my hole, the rain still pounding on the outside, now out of view. I was always thankful that my shelter kept me out of the rain. In here, I stayed dry. Yet I always went out anyway. I was wet now. What was I thankful for? The opportunity to stay dry?

I'd seen before that too much water killed the trees. In Lostlorn, trees near the creek leaned and eventually fell in. But the creek was the only thing still there after the fire. Water doesn't burn. It evaporates, then falls back down. Other things evaporate, too. They just don't fall as what they were.

They fall as ash.

Except for Lithium. She never evaporated or burned. She just died. Then she was removed. I imagine she was brought to Ben at some point. She would still have his trainer number attached to her. It's why released pokémon can't be captured again.

But no one could tell the difference. All any trainer would see was a lucario with a strange implement. Wild pokémon find all sorts of things in the woods. A trainer wouldn't think it unusual for a lucario to have tags. And he would send his growlithe after it. And he would exploit her weakness to fire. But the steel fur on a lucario gets hot under fire, and she would flee into the trees. How would she know any different? The only experience she had in the forest was living the life of the zoroark she had befriended. But he didn't know how to protect her. All he could do was watch while she hid in the leaves. And dry leaves burn when exposed to that kind of heat. And trees burn when exposed to fire. And when the trees burn they call it a forest fire. And the only thing that survives that kind of fire is a creek, stained with ash and soot, and a zoroark, escaping from the heat. And he would return, days later, to search for any sign that his previous life had survived, only to find a creek protecting a deformed metal tag on a chain.

I hate the tag. Everytime I look at it, I'm reminded of every sunny day underneath the canopy, and every night inside the den, huddled together against the wind, every apple shared under the blooms, every cloud passing over the clearing, and Ben, who had earned her love and admiration, then left her alone in a forest with no family surrounded by pokémon fully willing to kill for food against a lucario with no preparation to kill at all, and no idea if anyone would ever help her learn to survive.

I clutch the tag tighter, and cock my arm behind my head. This is the fifth time that day that I've started to throw the tag away. This is the fifth time that I've kept it.

At least she'd survived with him.

And despite the tree protecting me from the rain, droplets begin to fall on the tag.


End file.
